The History Project

Every West Virginian knows that "Mountaineers Are Always Free" but what many may not know is that our state motto was a quick addition to our state seal by its designer. A Frenchman came to the mountains and blended the imagery of his old and new homes to give West Virginia its symbolism. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lps8fSbGJUc  

Many legends blaze trails loudly with a roar, but others, like Katherine Johnson, lead direction with a gentle whisper. After the release of the book and th film "Hidden Figures," the world learned about Johnson and her colleagues, the women who played a key role at NASA in America's space race. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgcQTUQQDIw

In the company of Paul Bunyan, Pecos Bill, and the Mighty Casey, John Henry is a legend whom people see as a proper metaphor for the American spirit. Created from the ideals of African American laborers on the Big Bend Tunnel in the 1870s in Talcott, West Virginia, John Henry is the embodiment of the hero hardworking people needed then and now, and this is more than his story: It is our story. You...

While George Washington is famous for his grand estate, Mt. Vernon, in Virginia, few may know he owned thousands of acres in what would become West Virginia. As an surveyor and a veteran of the French & Indian and Revolutionary wars, Washington collected large parcels in the river valleys of the colonial West and they became a part of the Kanawha Tracts. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hc...

No other state was ever torn from another as was West Virginia. With the Civil War looming on the horizon, The Richmond Convention gave Virginia the opportunity to secede from the United States and The Wheeling Convention restored the rights of the state's western citizens to remain with the U.S. by seceding from Virginia. YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvQCHyQMRq4

Frustrated with the decline of Reconstruction, author and intellectual W.E.B. DuBois organized the greatest African American minds of the early 20th Century to form the Niagara Movement. After its first conference held in Canada, the movement's first meeting in the United States was a symbolic and landmark event at Harpers Ferry, and it would resonate to this very day. YouTube:  https://www.youtub...

As Americans celebrate Memorial Day, we are reminded of the sacrifices made by our veterans who kept the United States and most of the world free. What better time to examine the fascinating life of Charles Town hero Frank Buckles, who lived to be the last surviving American veteran of World War I. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JpMhp8jYRw

Standing as a monument to America's prison system of the 19th and 20th centuries, the West Virginia Penitentiary in Moundsville is a relic of the penal systems dark past. YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajbZrm0lMv0  

Willow Island is a small community along the Ohio River between Parkersburg and St. Marys and its name suggests a tranquil place, but on April 27, 1978, any tranquility was destroyed by a construction accident that would forever change the communities of the region.  YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDx4j-chnkg

We live in a world of invention but sometimes stories fail to explain that inventors work from ideas that were already in place. Robert Fulton gets credit for inventing the steamboat, but James Rumsey and others created the foundation on which he worked. YouTube Link:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agw-dveZ-O8

Manhattan, Beverly Hills and…Bramwell?  When one thinks of the wealthiest places in America, a small West Virginia town developed by a railroad to serve coal interests may not come to mind, but Bramwell once held the title as the wealthiest town in the U.S. per capita.  YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpEPoweulvQ

Wallis Simpson and Meghan Markle are famous for their marriages into European royalty, but before them West Virginian Katherine Elkins found herself at the center of a romance with an Italian duke that captured the world's attention.  

The facility's very name informs us that the hospital was both built in antebellum Virginia and in an era when views about mental health were much less sophisticated. But there's even more to the story than meets the eye in this landmark structure and its long history.

Lord Dunmore's war comes to a violent conclusion as Colonel Lewis & The Virginia Militia clashes with Chief Cornstalk and his Shawnee warriors in Pt. Pleasant, which would increase hostility between settlers and settlers, and severe American loyalty to England.

Colonial America was a cauldron of imperialism and territorial disputes, which set in motion Lord Dunmore's War, one of the continent's most significant skirmishes which would help to launch the American Revolution.  

It is said that "Well-behaved women seldom make history," and when Martha Stewart was sentenced to serve five months in FPC, Alderson, the world learned more about American history-makers both well-regarded or social pariahs.

With two jutting panhandles and western and southern extremes, West Virginia's unusual shape gives it four points like a compass rose, placing the Mountain State into the cross section of the Eastern United States.

West Virginia is the watershed of some of the nation's most storied rivers, some scenic and others industrial, they first used for exploration but later used for commercial development, as they are still used today. 

In December 1952, country music legend Hank Williams released his last song, "I'll Never Make it Out of this World Alive." A few weeks later, on New Year's Day, he was found dead in the backseat of his car in Oak Hill, West Virginia, with an unfinished song in his hand.

While the American Revolution battles in the coastal states were fought between America's Continental Army and England's Redcoats, the battles of the interior became extensions of skirmishes with Native Americans, spurred by the British that outlasted the Revolution itself. 

After his great success recruiting from the Shenandoah Valley, George Washington reached further into Western Virginia to draw its riflemen to serve in the American Revolution, whom he turned into a vast arm of the Continental Army. The 8th Virginia Regiment for alongside Washington in battle and suffered the winter with him in Valley Forge. 

Considered the "Father of West Virginia," Francis H. Pierpont was the man needed for the difficult task of gaining the state's independence from Virginia and entrusted by Lincoln to restore that state to order after the Civil War; the West Virginian who would be Governor of Virginia.

With its steep topography, residents in West Virginia are typically more concerned with floods than tornadoes, but in 1944, the Appalachian tornado outbreak unleashed fury upon the mountains. A category F-4 storm tested the resilience of Shinnston and surrounding area.

In 1974, the Kanawha County Board of Education introduced a new set of language arts textbooks, following state and federal guidelines to provide a more multicultural education. A newly elected board member, who ran against sex education, denounced the books and set in motion a culture war that resounded around the nation. 

The Mason-Dixon Line was created to officially decide the boundary between states, but as enslavement became entrenched in the South, it became the dividing line between slave states an free states, making Western Virginia's proximity to Pennsylvania a locus of the Underground Railroad.